Thursday, February 16, 2012

The quilting challenge for this month was feathers and was taught by Diane Gaudynski. I really had a lot of fun practicing these on a pillow case I was making for myself. The pattern was from the most recent issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. They didn’t quilt it in the pattern, but I wanted a nice fluffy pillow case so I quilted it and used it as a practice block. I chose not to mark it, but just used my spine as the guide and feathered away. Sometimes I only feathered on one side and adding feathers to a feather was my favorite part. This is just my practice, I still have to add feathers to a block on my sampler quilt which I will do as soon as I get more time between working, gardening, upgrading the shed and visiting with family. Sewing seems to get put aside once in a while for other things, but that gives my life balance and keeps me from getting bored with any one thing. Really I don’t seem to focus too long on any one project. I seem to hop from one thing to another and I can say that being bored is never a problem for me.

This is the whole pillow top quilted. The part I really like about this is that you make the back in an envelope style and it works so perfectly. There is never an end of the pillow sticking out. It just looks like a large throw pillow and I am really enjoying laying my head on a quilt each night, it is very comforting.

I will probably be doing another post on more feathers being done on my other project in the near future! Practicing all this free motion quilting is giving me the confidence I need to finish some of the quilt tops that have been pieced quite a while ago, some even a few years ago. Funny thing is that as nervous as I was about doing them once I get started it just feels so much easier than I thought and they get done in very little time. I even enjoy hand sewing the bindings. I can take a project to work and work on the hand sewing during my lunch and before I know it the whole quilt is done and ready to be washed and enjoyed, the best part!